The Incomparable Atuk (13 page)

‘It’s not Ignak I’m worried about. I was going to send him back to the Bay tomorrow anyway. Why did Mush-Mush go with him?’

‘They took some of the Queen’s pictures. You know, the green papers.’

‘Some of the orange ones too, Atuk.’

‘Goddam it. Back to bed. All of you.’

‘You must find him at once. At once,’ Twentyman said. ‘I warned you the story mustn’t break until Tuesday.’

‘I’ll do my best, Buck.’

‘Didn’t I offer to fly them all the way back to the Bay at my own expense?’ ‘Don’t worry. I’ll find them.’

‘You’re the one who should be worried. Not me:

Atuk agreed. But, concerned as he was, the boys’ escape was not his only problem. He was late for his appointment with Rabbi Siegal.

Rabbi Seigal waited by the phone in his office. Harry Snipes had not called yet. May he burn in hell, Seigal thought.

Seigal had felt secure, the Temple executive had seemed pleased when the
Standard
had decided to run his column on a three-a-week basis, but then young Bergman, the new Rabbi at the other temple, had been signed on by the
Gazette
. Rory Peel, may his teeth rot in his mouth, had made a survey and it was discovered that the little
mamzer
had a larger readership. What the
drecks
on the executive didn’t understand was that Bergman ran on the same page as
Sheilah
Graham while he was buried in the classified ads section with that latter-day
yoshka
of a
Billy
Graham. Well, if Snipes took to the idea of this series …

‘Rabbi, I’m sorry to intrude, but there’s somebody here to—’

‘I told you—’

‘It’s Atuk. The Eskimo poet. He says it’s urgent. You did give him an appointment, you know.’

Atuk told the Rabbi about his trouble with Rory Peel. He explained what he wanted to do.

‘I see, my son. I see.’

Rabbi Seigal turned his back to Atuk, hard put to conceal his enthusiasm. This would be the biggest
catch since Sammy Davis. Bigger, by Canadian standards.

‘I don’t want you to rush into this, though. Perhaps you ought to reflect for a week or two. It’s a big decision, Atuk.’

‘You call me Abe, Rabbi. Like Abraham, may he rest in peace. I want my name altered.’

‘It’s good to see you’re familiar with the Old Testament, but frankly we don’t go in for those style names any more. What about … Ashley?’

‘Rabbi, I want you to know I intend to study Yiddish. I—’

‘Mm, Yiddish isn’t necessary. We’re modern Jews here, Atuk.’

‘I was going to ask you about that, Rabbi. I don’t mean to be impertinent, but what is that Christmas tree I saw in the hall?’

‘Inter-Faith, Atuk. This year Father McKendrick will start off the Christmas dinner at the Concrete Club with chopped liver and we—’

‘But the Concrete Club doesn’t admit Jews. Those bastards, they—’

‘We have to learn to walk before we can run, my son. Blind anger breeds violence.’

‘An eye for an eye, it is written. A tooth for a tooth.’

‘Tell me, son, would you object if I were to alert the press about this wedding with Miss Panofsky?’

Atuk hesitated.

‘You see, last week in Miami Rabbi Bergman
scored a hole-in-one. Well, I happen to know what Bergman’s game is like. I’d hate to call him a liar, but … Well you probably saw his picture in all the papers and—’

‘Rabbi, whatever you say. Another thing I would like you to know. We’re going to keep a kosher home. No
chazer-fleisch
in our house.’ Atuk looked up at the ceiling. ‘If I forget thee, Jerusalem.’

‘Oh, that’s all right. A charming custom; charming. Will you be joining our country club?’

‘I hope Rory Peel will see to my application.’

The Rabbi’s secretary interrupted. ‘A telephone call for you, Mr Atuk. The man says it’s urgent.’

It was Rory.

‘We’ve found Mush-Mush. Two of McEwen’s operators have him. They’ve taken him to the
Standard
office.’

On the fifth floor of the
Standard
, outside Jean-Paul McEwen’s office, the two men held Mush-Mush between them on the bench. He seemed amused. He stared at the enormous redhead behind the desk at the head of the room.

The big redhead went to his filing cabinet, opened the T-Z drawer, and began to flip through some folders. T-Ty-Tyn. He found the folders he wanted, extracted a long clipping from it, and set it down beside his typewriter. ‘In my estimation,’ Seymour Bone wrote, ‘last night’s production of
The Hostage
—’ Bone leaned over to study the clippings
again. He frowned. ‘Larry,’ he called, ‘be a good fellow and get me the
Shorter Oxford
, please.’

Jean-Paul McEwen opened the door. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘bring him in. Christ, couldn’t you have given him a shower first?’

‘But we just took him to the can. He’s afraid of water, Jean-Paul.’

‘O?. Shoot.’ McEwen leaned back in her swivel chair, her half-closed eyes sheltered by her hand.

‘Well,’ Arnold said, ‘he’s wandering through Lob-law’s, the big one on St Clair, like in a daze, when he suddenly comes to the frozen food counter. He sees all this fish, and the next thing he’s ripping packages open right there, and it takes five guys …’

They went on to tell McEwen how the little fellow, who said he was an Eskimo, claimed to have been separated from his brother in a crowd. The cops couldn’t make anything out of his story, but they figured McEwen might be interested.

‘Who figured?’ McEwen demanded. ‘Just who passed him on to you?’

‘Captain Whitaker.’

‘How many times have I told you I will accept compromising favours from no man?’

McEwen, unlike many another Toronto columnist, not only returned all cases of liquor, cheques, and automobiles, but she had also, according to report, refused birthday gifts from her nieces on the grounds that, as girl guides, they represented a pressure group.

‘But wait till you hear his story, Jean-Paul. He’s from Baffin Bay. He says he’s been incarcerated for the last few months in a factory that makes Eskimo sculpture. He also says he can give you something hot on the DEW-line case.’

‘You stupid bastards,’ McEwen said, ‘you know Twentyman’s out to get me ever since I wrote that column on
Metro
. Well, some of his boys have put this creep on to me. He’s a plant. I’m supposed to fall for his story and look like an idiot when the
Gazette
exposes me tomorrow morning. Eskimo. Look at him.’

‘I’m Eskimo.’

‘Charlie Chan’s Number One Son,’ McEwen said, ‘get the hell out of my office.’

‘Don’t you even want to hear his
DEW
-line story?’

‘No.’

The boys looked hurt.

‘O?, OK, but make it quick.’

‘Oh, one thing, Jean-Paul. He won’t talk unless you show him a trick or two. You see, we’ve already got his confidence, to some extent.’ Arnold winked. ‘We showed him the magic.’

‘What?’

Arnold whispered an explanation in McEwen’s ear.

‘Take this kook back to the funny-farm and I’ll deal with you later.’

In his eagerness to reach McEwen’s office the book reviewer slipped and almost fell on a banana peel
as he passed the desk outside. ‘Hey,’ he shouted, ‘wait till you hear what’s happened in the john!’

‘I thought that son-of-a-bitch promised to cut that out. If we lose one more copy boy—’

‘No, no, it’s not that again. Somebody’s been in there wiping his ass with fifty-dollar bills. The floor’s covered with them.’

McEwen turned on Mush-Mush. ‘Empty his pockets,’ she said.

Out came a few more fifty dollar bills.

‘Bring me coffee. OK, fella. From the beginning. Take it nice and easy.’

‘In Baffin Bay, at the time of the great ice-sheet, when the land was ours from sea to sea, was very long night—’

‘Hiya!’

‘Atuk!’ Mush-Mush stepped quickly behind Arnold. He began to whimper.

‘Hiya, J-P. I was in the neighbourhood and thought I’d drop in to tell you what a charge I got out of your column yesterday.’

‘This,’ Jean-Paul said, ‘is beginning to get very interesting.’

Atuk picked up a fifty-dollar bill and turned to Mush-Mush; his smile magnanimous. ‘There was no need to run away, kid, just because you’ – he winked at Jean-Paul – ‘borrowed some money. Come on, I’ll buy you an ice-cream and we’ll go home.’

‘I no go.’

‘Kid, I—’

‘Ignak spoke the truth and you only lies. It is safe on the outside.’

Atuk laughed and slapped his knees. ‘He kills me. Of course it’s safe on the outside.’

‘You frighten me no more, brother. I’m going to tell this white woman everything.’

‘Sure, kid. Go ahead.’

‘You mean, you don’t mind?’

‘You know how much I love you, Mush-Mush. Go ahead. Tell her.’ Atuk grinned at Jean-Paul. ‘Mind if I sit down?’

‘Not at all.’

‘I’m so glad the kid’s safe.’ Atuk jerked his head toward Mush-Mush and tapped his forehead. ‘He doesn’t mean any harm, you know.’

‘I begin with the true
DEW
-line story,’ Mush-Mush said ominously.

‘Oh, one thing. Before you begin. Are you
sure
she’s white?’

Mush-Mush drew back.

‘You’ve had the proof?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Maybe you’re the one who’s nutty,’ Jean-Paul said.

Mush-Mush whispered something to Arnold.

‘Gee, I dunno,’ Arnold said nervously. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘What is it?’ Jean-Paul asked.

‘He, well, like he wants you to – he wants to see your stomach exposed.’

McEwen looked baffled.

‘You see,’ Atuk said, ‘my little brother feels he can’t trust you, he can’t be sure you’re powerful white woman, until he sees your stomach. What harm can it do?’

McEwen pulled up her blouse and Mush-Mush walked around her several times. ‘Give her the white pill now,’ he said.

Atuk dug into his pocket. ‘He wants you to take an aspirin,’ he said.

McEwen took the pill, washing it down with a glass of water. Breathing quickly, Mush-Mush went round and round her. Arnold watched, alarmed. The Eskimo’s smile lapsed and he looked exceedingly mean. Without warning, he seized McEwen’s head and examined it closely.

‘Ouch,’ McEwen said, breaking free.

Mush-Mush peered intently at McEwen’s chest and stomach.

‘OK,’ McEwen said, pulling down her blouse, ‘the story. Give.’

‘No. Because you are a fake. Unless—’ He grabbed the pill bottle. ‘Read the craziness upon it for me. Does it say X brand or—’

Atuk held up the bottle for Arnold to look at.

‘Aspirin.’

‘If you don’t mind,’ Atuk said, gathering up the fifty-dollar bills on the desk, ‘I’ll take my little brother home now.’

‘The sooner the better,’ McEwen said, still holding her head.

Atuk led Mush-Mush to the elevator. Arms raised heavenwards, eyes rolling, he said, ‘Oh, descend, descend wondrous box, to street level.’

‘All you have to do is press the button.’

‘Know-it-all.’

‘What are you going to do with me?’

‘Make you a partner in the business. What else?’

‘Aren’t you angry?’

‘You’re family, Mush-Mush. How can I be angry?’

Mush-Mush told him that Ignak had returned to the Bay.

‘Good.’

‘You mean you will truly share profits with me?’

‘Sure, kid. Now you go home and see how the others are making out.’

Mush-Mush looked left, he looked right. The rush hour traffic was at its height. ‘Alone?’ he asked.

‘But there’s no danger on the outside. You said so yourself.’

Mush-Mush began to tremble.

‘It’s straight ahead. You can’t miss the house.’ Clapping him on the shoulder, Atuk added, ‘Partner.’

‘Ok.’

‘All you have to do is remember that there are traffic lights at each corner. You see that one?’

‘Yes.’

‘You wait until it’s red and then you run like hell. It’s the only safe time to cross the street, remember.’

‘When it’s red.’

‘Good. See you at home.’

Atuk stepped into the nearest phone booth.

‘Buck, relax. Ignak’s gone back to the Bay and Mush-Mush was just killed in a traffic accident.’

A car skidded. Atuk winced, waiting for the impact. It came. He made the sign of the seal.

‘You’ll have to speak louder, Buck. People are screaming outside.’

Ti-Lucy brought Atuk his morning
Standard
. Like thousands of other Torontonians, Atuk turned to Jean-Paul McEwen’s column first.

‘Somewhere in Toronto today a used car dealer is having the speedometer “adjusted” on his ‘58 Chevy. A charming chap with a British accent is going club-to-club selling credulous widows shares in a uranium mine. A decent fellow, somebody who never thinks of himself as a murderer, is having “one for the road” before driving home; – and two blocks away a woman who has led a blameless life, a mother of three, starts across the street – to her death.

‘As you read this, a fifty-year-old man is being told he is too old for his job. Because we have enforced religious education in our schools the innocent son of agnostic parents is being mocked by his teacher and classmates for refusing to subscribe to
Bible Comics. In the time it took you to read that last sentence they dumped tons of coffee beans into the Gulf of Mexico while, in Cabbage Town, hundreds of families living on relief cannot afford the price of a package
. On Spadina Avenue, a little boy has just come home with a bleeding nose. “What happened?” his mother asks. “They think I’m a sissy because I won’t play Switch-Blade.” She washes and tends to him, she reassures the lad, he goes upstairs to practice his piano – and one day he may grow up to be another Glenn Gould.

‘In his enormous home in Forest Hill, a manufacturer who was 4-F during the war, complains to his wife that domestics aren’t what they used to be, while in a rooming house on Jarvis Street a broken man takes his VC out of his cardboard suitcase and starts for the pawn shop. As you read this column a baby is being born and a man is dying … two youngsters are swearing eternal love and a man is telling his boy that he and Mummy are no longer attracted to each other … a Negro student, who will one day be in the Nigerian cabinet, has been told there are no vacancies at Twentyman Towers … a teacher, a ridiculed spinster, has just picked up Manny Green’s essay and, reading it,
she realizes that the boy is not, as others in class call him, Lard-Ass or Squint-Head, but possibly another Seymour Bone. Manny, blinking behind his thick glasses, looks up at his teacher’s hairy face. To him, she is beautiful. This is Toronto. Love and injustice. Criminality and kindness. This is our city. And lurking somewhere in it is one of the foulest of the human species: the despoiler of virtue.